Thanks for the invite Gilbertd.

It was very quiet on the other side and as you have helped me through the years I thought I'd follow.

Originally from Christchurch Dorset moved to Dijon -France 18 months ago and brought the P38 with.Paying 3 x the insurance I was in the Uk but I just cant give it up and I hate left hand drives.

a bientôt

That's a coincidence, I drove through Dijon about 48 hours ago....... I regularly drive to Antibes (halfway between Cannes and Nice on the Cote d'Azure) and got back yesterday morning from another of my runs. Always in the P38, nearly always with a couple of tonnes on a trailer on the back but she'll still cruise at 80 mph.

We stayed in Mougins last year, wasn't impressed with Cannes or St Tropez that much but really liked Antibes.

We dont use the P38 for long distance though, even though its €1.17 for petrol here . The mrs has a Citroen Xsara Picasso that does about 70mpg compared to 20mpg but the p38 gets used daily here in Dijon.

Its a good location here for travel, not far from the borders. Went to Italy a few weeks back to Mont Blanc. Saw a lot of P38's with British plates there. Wasn't you buy chance ?

I was over there last weekend, in December and September, so if you ever spot a white, R reg P38, usually with a car transporter trailer on the back, that'll be me then. Running on LPG makes mine pretty damn cheap to run and there's nothing else that tows like a V8 P38. A friend came with me this trip and she was nervous that she'd never driven with anything bigger than a small box trailer on the back. After a few minutes she admitted she'd forgotten the trailer was there. Coming back on Monday we were sitting at 80 mph most of the way with an Inocentti Mini Cooper on the trailer (only got flashed twice though). I found a UK reg L322 trundling along at about 65 for some unknown reason and he looked quite astonished when I hurtled past him!

The best part about Cannes is Cresci La Pizza on the corner by the harbour (next to the police station), purveyors of the best pizzas in Europe. Antibes is a nice place, our workshop is just down the road from the huge Carrefour hypermarket next to Junc 44 of the A8 and when finished there for the day, a visit to Le Pimms bar in Antibes is where we can be found. Nice old town is very nice too. My mate lives about 6 miles inland from Nice, up in the mountains where the Alps run down to meet the sea, just outside Tourrette Levens.

I must admit, I love driving over there, hardly any traffic compared to the UK, and the French seem to know what lane discipline is. Since I got myself a telepeage unit to stick on the inside of the windscreen, I don't have to stop, leap out of the car and run round to feed the machine with money or plastic (with the width of the trailer I can't pull up close enough to the machine to be able to clamber across the front of the car). It's knocked half an hour off my journey time purely by not having to stop in a queue.

Driving on the autoroutes are bliss, as you say hardly any traffic compared to the Uk.

In town is a completely different story though, especially where I live. Even when there are road markers painted on the road guiding you to the correct side at junctions etc the French just get confused making it a free for all.
The stupid archaic give way to the right unless your on a priority road. We have a ton of side roads here of which I am constantly slowing down in awareness that the French treat this rule. They dont slow down and just pull straight out on you.
Ive heard the government are trying to change this rule but how true that is.
Ive also just read that there are old roundabouts and new roundabouts, WTF. Most here are give way to the left but Ive read there are still old roundabout where you give way to the right, so if your already on the roundabout you have to give way to traffic joining it.

Im sure your well adversed to all rules and regs here though but even after 18 months I'm still very weary.

You say your workshop, is that for RR or Yachts?

Workshop is for the cars we import. For the last 5 years or so we've been importing cars from the States into the UK. I do the bare minimum to get them through an MoT so they can be registered here and then transport them down there. Once there they get stripped down to nothing and fully restored. As they have a UK V5, then they can be transferred to French plates, without that, they are an import from outside the EU and simply can't be registered without an EU Certificate of Conformity which most of the stuff we deal with is simply too old and pre-dates that scheme. We started off with 1950s and 1960s Yank stuff, but then got offered a 1958 Austin Healey so bought that. Since then it's been more Healeys, E Type Jags and just recently, Volvo P1800s. Values of the Volvo coupés is rocketing and they are so well put together they are dead easy to strip down to nothing and put back together. There's no pattern parts available either but everything can still be got from Volvo so actually fits, unlike the crap pattern parts for a Jag for instance.

My mate moved down there nearly 25 years ago and I've been running up and down for various reasons since then so am well versed in the French (lack of) rules of the road. The old Priorite a droit makes things interesting but even a Frenchman tends to bottle out of pulling out in front of a Range Rover with a couple of tonnes on the back. I think the best one I've found is the roundabout, or more correctly, the circular road, around the Arc de Triumphe at the end of the Champes Elysee in Paris. That is treated as a roundabout but with traffic entering having right of way over traffic already going around. Gets really interesting when one exit is blocked and people still try to use a bit of road that already has someone parked on it. It amused me when they started putting in proper roundabouts with huge vous n'avez pas la priorite signs, no shit, there's a white line about a foot wide painted on the road!

I tend to ignore most of the rules of the road when over there. I'd have lost my licence years ago if I did the same over here. You're not allowed in the 3rd lane if towing a trailer bigger that 750kgs, but there's no way I'm going to sit in a queue behind a convoy of trucks. I've been flashed by speed cameras more times that I care to think about and surely those yellow lines at the side of the road mean it's parking for visitors only?

Next trip is for 1st/2nd of April but I'll be flying down that time just for a change. Luton to Nice on Easyjet at £25 each way, can't be beaten.

Richard

Interesting stuff. Do you have a web site or is it a case of demand and supply?

Registering the car was a pain for me as I didn't speak French . £150 for certificate from Land Rover, luckily managed to get a pair of L/H headlights from ebay whilst in the Uk for £100. watching them perform the contrôle technique brought a lump to the throat of which they failed it, luckily small issues that I fixed but what I wasnt prepared for was the registration cost, despite being over 10 years old and receiving 50% reduction on cost it still cost near €500 to register for French plates.

I am now in the process of transferring the motorbike, luckily its over 30 years old and doesn't require the certificate of conformity so straight sailing hopefully. Cant believe MOT's are not required for bikes here.

Bit more difficult for us as there is no certificate in existence for our stuff but it can still be done. Bikes are a piece of piss in comparison. We bought a 1967 Triumph Bonneville as a container filler last year. I tried to get an MoT on it here to register it and there was so much slop in the front forks there was no way I was going to be able to bodge it through a ticket. So it went to France unregistered and that was the easiest of anything we've ever done.